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These were inner city kids from Chicago

My son lives there and so I am familiar with the area. How do these kids get to Northwestern when it is in the suburbs. They won't have school busses the rest of the time. It would be like busing a bunch of Oakland inner city kids to Stanford. How they going to get there the rest of the time.

Chicago and its suburbs have some of the best public transportation and transportation connections in the country. Also, when I lived there, Evanston was more like a part of Chicago than the suburbs. In sum, I hope we can have a day to show off our own team to local students just like this in the future. It can also be very inspiring to these students to meet role model players on our team.

Only 4598? Seemed like a lot more. It was LOUD in there. We were sitting right behind the Cal bench and I believe Coach Gottlieb had trouble having herself heard.
It was a great crowd. They pumped in lots of music - they had several mascots from different high schools - lots of time out stuff involving the kids - the mascots did a version of musical chairs. They tossed t-shirts.
I wish Cal did the same thing - the Cal SID guy was very impressed and noted that Cal tried to do the same thing for the St. Mary's game and will try again.

The crowd made it feel like a tournament game - a large hostile and loud crowd. Now, there wasn't organized Northwestern chants or cries of "DEFENSE" - so the noise was kind of non-directional - but still disruptive.

Everyone says why don't we do the same thing

1. We do. Except it is on the weekend.

2. It is loud. Little shrill voices carry. we pull in 10,000 for the Stanford game.

3. California schools are destitute. They will not run busses. so how will you get all those kids to the game. And Northwestern was talking about inner city kids. That would be probably in South Chicago and maybe West chicago. That is like 20 to 30 miles away.

4. The el is an excellent mode of transportation but how many inner city kids from San Francisco would take Bart on their own to a Cal women's game afterwards.

5. My wife and I own a school. We will be attending a game on a weekend with the school. It is good deal as certain dates are $3.00 per person for the game. Good deal.

6. Northwestern did this last year and got a good crowd. The rest of the year was dismal in attendance.

7. How would you like to be a season ticket holder there, and the best nonconference game of the year was on a day when you worked and you couldn't attend.

8. Dfineguy, you were absent several of our previous games. The rest of us season ticket holders were there being counted.

Only 4598? Seemed like a lot more. It was LOUD in there ... the Cal SID guy was very impressed and noted that Cal tried to do the same thing for the St. Mary's game and will try again ... The crowd made it feel like a tournament game - a large hostile and loud crowd. Now, there wasn't organized Northwestern chants or cries of "DEFENSE" - so the noise was kind of non-directional - but still disruptive.

Thank you for your game reports on the other thread. I did watch the paid video but you provided some useful additional info.

4500+ is large for any women's game and HUGE for Northwestern. I've seen around a dozen telecasts over the years from that venue and the "crowds" are usually very sparse and quiet. So the atmosphere was great for the players and coaches. The crowd noise may have seemed a bit unfocused but having watched many kids' day telecasts, I would say today's kids were as focused on the game as you would ever see. In many other venues (like UCLA), it's obvious the kids aren't really paying much attention to the game or making much noise except at the beginning and the end. Today's crowd noise sounded continuous and supportive.

I have no idea why wvitbear would characterize today's crowd as "inner city kids". Why would anyone think that they restricted this promotion to limited areas within the one city of Chicago? Maybe ncbears recognized the names of the schools being called out today and can give a guess as to the location of today's schools. Otherwise, people can look at the crowd from today's photo gallery (link on this page) and make their own guesses as to diversity (geographical and otherwise).

Finally, let's stop the mischaracterization of the decision on the St. Mary's game. Everything points to a belated and possibly unfocused attempt on Cal's part to initiate this type of school kids' promotion, and it was cancelled when they couldn't get a sufficient number of commitments from local school districts. Had they gotten the commitments, the promotion would have proceeded and a boilerplate explanation/apology would have been sent to the handful of fans who complained. The promotion would NOT have been cancelled because of isolated complaints, and as such I believe it when Cal says they will try to initiate this type of promotion in the future.

The Schools were a very diverse group - I dont' know how many were public - but definitely some private schools in attendance since I recall a couple of St. This and St. Thats. It definitely was not all inner-city (African American - as Chicago city public schools are like 80% or more african american, I believe based on a lawsuit I was involved in a few years ago). They flashed the names of the schools on the scoreboard before the game started to thunderous cheers from the particular school. But I don't recall any specifics

Women's Basketball Has Found it's Audience

and it is high school kids. Northwestern will now see it's under 700 a game attendance swell to 4598 a game. All they have to do is play the remainder of their schedule at 11am on weekdays and bus in 4500 kids a game. Sounds like a solid plan. Northwestern no longer needs those bothersome season ticket holders who actually expect for games to be played when most adults can actually attend. One other thing, I'm sure NW WBB will be rolling in the dough when all those kids donate their lunch money to the WBB program. I think they call this plan desperation. Anyway, had Cal come out an blitzed NW as they should have, how many of those kids keep making noise?

(Damn, why didn't I see this coming? Could have applied for a governmnent grant to study how many of the 4598 high school kids attend even one more NW WBB game, let alone become lifelong fans. Could have been easy money.)

As for being like a tournament game - really? Have you been to an NCAA tournament game? Unless it is held in the home area of your opponent, NCAA tournamnet game crowds tend to be relatively small pockets of participating team fans surrounded by thousands of indifferent fans. I've been to both NCAA MBB and WBB tournament games, including one Final Four. The noise in those games is not a factor unless one team is local or a 16 seed has a 1 seed on the ropes. The difficulty of NCAA tourney games is their one-and-done nature and the huge stakes of the post-season, not crowd noise. Now, if we are talking NIT, then crowd noise is an issue. I hope we are not talking NIT.

Yes. If Cal schedules one of these things next year, as a season ticket holder and Cal WBB donor I will complain. For reasons listed by wvitbear, this marketing voodoo is unnecessary and disrespectful to paying fans. There are ways to involve the community, including HS aged kids, without screwing over the paying customers. Stop being lazy Cal marketing. Note to Lindsay, a Sweet 16 team might also help. Final Four would be even better. Use Furd as your model on how to build fan interest, not attendance under-achievers like Northwestern and ucla.

Aside from the crowd dynamics, I am disappointed in how we represented today as the #8 team in the whole USA. Lindsay needs to teach this team play at it's potential every time they take the court without regard to where or who they play. Beating Northwestern as we did today is not what I have in mind. This should not have been a close game, screaming kids or not.

As for being like a tournament game - really? Have you been to an NCAA tournament game? Unless it is held in the home area of your opponent, NCAA tournamnet game crowds tend to be relatively small pockets of participating team fans surrounded by thousands of indifferent fans. I've been to both NCAA MBB and WBB tournament games, including one Final Four. The noise in those games is not a factor unless one team is local or a 16 seed has a 1 seed on the ropes. The difficulty of NCAA tourney games is their one-and-done nature and the huge stakes of the post-season, not crowd noise. Now, if we are talking NIT, then crowd noise is an issue. I hope we are not talking NIT.

Aside from the crowd dynamics, I am disappointed in how we represented today as the #8 team in the whole USA. Lindsay needs to teach this team play at it's potential every time they take the court without regard to where or who they play. Beating Northwestern as we did today is not what I have in mind. This should not have been a close game, screaming kids or not.

I have been to Tournament games - men, women and NIT. This game had a special feel to it from the crowd. And those games can get loud. I hope Cal gets to play before more loud crowds - whether those are the under18 crowd or older -
As for whether this should have been a close game...that's why they play the games. Cal was missing Pierre, Clarendon was off and NU was tall and had some skilled players. Diamant was a big girl and skilled. Rozer could slice up lots of defenses. We'll see how NU does in conference - before you can decide what kind of win this was. While Cal eventually outrebounded NU and outscored NU in the paint, that generally came, it seemed, from wearing down NU over the course of each half. At the bottom line, a win is a win. You don't get style points. Lindsay adjusted during the game - Her board got a lot of use in coaching the team. And the team responded - for example, when she told Hartman "Diamant", Hartman jumped up from bench and went in and at it. The team responded and won a game under pressure and hit many free throws when they counted. Was it perfect? No. But, few games are. We'll see how they do with Kansas on Friday .. at home .. and with GoCal73 there. Perhaps GoCal73 will bring 30 kids from his local high school.

NC Bears

Doubt that GoCal 73 will bring kids as it is a night game. I may bring 30 kids later on a Saturday or sunday afternoon. Who else here volunteers to bring 30 kids?

I've been to 4 sweet sixteen's. All men's. And they are loud but usually not as loud as a Cal home game with the right opponent. Sat beside the UCLA contingent a few years ago and they were loud but I was right next to them. The game before that was not as loud.

Have probably been to 30 state high school championships and they can be loud but not as many people attend as they used to.

wvitbear, I didn't really focus on the defense NU was playing. I think they mixed it up, but it felt like a zone much of the time. That is why lots of plays were Boyd curling and driving into the lane, or trying to throw over the top to Brandon/Caldwell. There was ball movement along the 3point line, but Cal didn't often take even the open 3s.